About four hundred years ago someone from Ikeda village on Shodoshima stopped at Miwa, in what is now Nara prefecture, learned how somen was made there, and carried the method back home across the water with him.

Two reasons are given for why the craft took hold on this particular island, and neither of them has anything to do with flavor. It could be done in winter, when there was no farm work. And it could be done entirely with family labor, without hiring anyone.

Hand-stretched somen is usually made using rapeseed oil. Here the dough is worked instead with sesame oil pressed on the island itself, which is the reason the finished noodles carry a faint yellow tint that somen from anywhere else does not have.

The dough is drawn out on wooden rods, worked down by hand over and over until it is barely more than a thread, and then dried slowly outdoors in the sun. The salt comes from the Inland Sea and the wheat flour from the Sanuki plain across the water. Every winter the stretching and drying starts up again across the island. A thing that could be made in the season when the fields were empty, using only the hands already in the house. That is what got chosen.